Valve Confirms Fnatic will be attending The International 2022

Sadly even after years of competitive Dota 2, the community feels like the longer into a competitive year of Dota 2 we are, the worse the communication department from Valve gets for viewers, players, and organizations alike.

Right after another clumsy set of ticket sales for The International 2022, Valve has just randomly tossed a new ruleset into the Dota Pro Circuit that directly impacts which teams are getting a straight invite to the tournament. Check out the rest of our esport betting because we’ll be covering the most important events!

Yesterday rather late in the day, several fans mentioned there was something different between the “official” Valve DPC website leaderboards and “unofficial” yet credible websites like Liquipedia’s leaderboards, showing that Fnatic was indeed qualified for TI11, not the previous Virtus.pro roster playing now under the Outsiders brand. This was then confirmed yesterday by the official Dota 2 Twitter account and a blog statement post, leading to mass outrage within the competitive community.

According to several different setups run by sources, including Liquipedia, after being sent home from the Arlington DPC Major during the weekend, Outsiders managed to qualify for the final TI11 direct invite, taking out Fnatic by barely .05 points. At least, that is what the community and analysts thought, until yesterday.

After the statement, according to Valve’s official leaderboards, Fnatic is in fact the team that managed to grab that last place, thanks to some of Outsiders’ points being changed for removing players during mid-season, along with every other penalty step, have been rounded rather than being directly deducted at their initial value. This leaves Fnatic at the usual 1020 DPC points earned, while Outsiders is “officially” placed at 1019.

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There is no mention of the rounding penalties process or points of any kind placed anywhere on the official DPC rule page, in other words up until today, everyone was using the usual math based on set percentage deductions to calculate “official” placements and Valve just decided to input this on everyone, while making it “official” with no real communication provided.

Unfortunately, this isn’t the first time things like this around the DPC website happened out of nowhere. Stats for Soniqs and other teams like Royal Never Give Up were not up to date with current DPC points, however Valve did update Sonqis’ placement after announcing the Fnatic qualification.

Valve’s position on this is rather strange, as they are not only openly discrediting one of the best run information resources for Dota 2 and a plethora of other Valve games’ competitive scenes, but also tagged them as “unofficial sources.”

The Spanish official blog listed Outsiders instead of Fnatic as claiming the spot as well, leading to some weird communication issues.
Currently, it seems like Fnatic will be attending TI11 through a direct invite, unless something changes in the near future, sadly Outsiders will have to play in the Eastern Europe qualifiers for a possibility at qualifying through the Last Chance Qualifier.

Regional Qualifiers are set to start from September 3rd to 18th, with LCQ being placed in Singapore from October 8th to 12th. We’ll be sharing our esports bets and esports odds with you, so make sure to check them out!